Occult History

Schmidt Number: S-2340

On-line since: 15th July, 2007

Lecture 5

Stuttgart, 31th December 1910

THE
glimpse into the development of individualities
such as those whom we were able, in the lecture yesterday, to follow
through two incarnations allows us to discern something of the mysterious
inflow and activity of the cosmic Spirits during the evolution and history
of mankind. For when we keep before our minds the pictures which, in
brief outline at least, came before us yesterday, the pictures of Julian
the Apostate and of a later expression of this individuality in history
as Tycho Brahe, the great astronomer, one thing may strike us particularly.
Precisely in the case of personalities who signify something in history
we can observe that the special qualities of the individuality work
over from one incarnation into another; but that what spiritual Beings
of the higher Hierarchies desire to accomplish in history, using single
individuals as their instrument, asserts itself in the straightforward
course of reincarnation as a modifying factor.

For we shall realise that
in the 4th century
A.D.
it was the function of the individuality who
appeared as Julian the Apostate to give as it were a last impetus for
the final flaring up of the spiritual wisdom belonging to earlier epochs,
and thus to preserve it from the fate that might easily have befallen
it if struggling Christianity alone had been left to handle such treasures.
And on the other hand we shall realise that an individuality incarnated
in a man whose good fortune it was to be initiated into the Elusinian
Mysteries had opportunities, on reincarnating, for receiving in endless
abundance the impulses of the time and the influences of beings working
in the way destined for the 16th century. We shall find entirely understandable
the greatness and power of the personality of Tycho Brahe, as outlined
yesterday, if we realise that precisely because he had been an Initiate
in an earlier incarnation he was able to bring to light an untold fund
of macrocosmic science in its application to the microcosm.
(See Note 25,
and
Appendix.)
Such studies of occult
history make us aware that it is men themselves who make history, but
that history in the last resort becomes comprehensible only when we
find the connection between the single personalities who appear and
pass away and the individual threads which run through the whole course
of human evolution, reincarnating in personalities. But if we are to
understand the historical life of mankind on our earth, we must always
associate with it that which streams in from other worlds, super-sensible
worlds, through the Powers of other Hierarchies.

In the course of these
lectures we have heard how certain high-ranking Powers of the Hierarchies
have worked, through human beings, into all the civilisation-epochs
since the Atlantean catastrophe. This was most strongly evident in the
ancient Indian soul which may be said to have been simply an arena for
the inflowing of higher spiritual Beings. In the soul of the ancient
Persian it was not so to the Same extent. And then we heard how in Egypto-Chaldean
civilisation it was even then the mission of the human soul —
noticeable particularly in the Babylonian people — to bring the
super-personal down into the personal, the spiritual down to the physical
plane. The significance of personality constantly increases the nearer
we come to the Greek epoch, when the ego works and weaves in the ego.
In the strong and forceful figures of the Greek epoch the stamp of personality
is complete. It is with the Greeks, and later with the Romans, that
what can at first be bestowed on the individuality only from higher
worlds withdraws to the greatest extent, while what a man expresses
in his personality as his proper humanity comes to the forefront.

The question may arise:
Which particular Spirits, from which Hierarchies, worked through the
ancient Indians, the ancient Persians, the Babylonians, Chaldeans and
Egyptians respectively It is the answer to this question that alone
can give us deeper insight into the occult course of history.
[see Note 26]
The investigations made possible from occult sources enable us, in a
certain sense at any rate, to say which particular Beings of the higher
Hierarchies worked through men as their instruments in each of these
periods. Into the ancient Indian soul, which created the civilisation
immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the Beings we call
the Angeloi, the Angels, poured their forces. And in a certain connection
it is true to say that when a man of ancient India spoke, when he gave
expression to what was active in his soul, it was not his own egohood
speaking directly, but an Angelos, an Angel. Ranking only one stage
higher than man, the Angel is the hierarchical Being most closely related
to him and therefore able, as it were, to speak more directly. It is
in the ancient Indian mode of speech that an element foreign to the
human comes most strongly into evidence, because the Angel, as the Being
most closely related to man, is able to speak with the greatest directness.

This direct expression
was less possible for the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who spoke
through the souls of the ancient Persian people, for they were Beings
of the next higher rank — the Archangels. And because these Beings
stand two stages higher than man, what they were able to express by
means of human instruments was farther away from their own inherent
nature than what the Angels could express through the ancient Indians.
Thus, stage by stage, everything becomes more human. Nevertheless this
downflow from the higher Hierarchies is continuous, unbroken. Through
the souls of the Babylonian, Chaldean, Egyptian peoples, the Spirits
of Personality (the Archai) express themselves. Hence it is in this
period that the emergence of personality is most prominent, and what
man is still able to give out from the forces streaming down to him
is therefore the farthest removed from its origin, bearing the essential
stamp of the human-personal. And so, as evolution advances to the
Egypto-Babylonian epoch, there is a continuing manifestation of the
Angels, the Archangels and the Spirits of Personality.

In the ancient Persians,
especially, we can see very exactly how they had an awareness that the
Archangels — the Spirits of paramount importance in that epoch
— were working into the human organism, the human organism in
its totality. We must not, to be sure, take an average Persian when
considering the downflowing of forces from the Hierarchies. The forces
streamed down, too, upon the average Persian, but only those who were
the immediate pupils of the inspirer of the ancient Persian culture,
of Zarathustra himself, were capable of knowing how this happened, of
seeing through to the reality. And they did indeed possess this knowledge.
For you will remember from many descriptions I have given of the teachings
of Zarathustra, or from exoteric traditions, that according to the view
of the ancient Persians the primal Divinity, Zervana Akarana, reveals
himself through the two opposing powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman. The ancient
Persians were clearly aware that whatever comes to manifestation in
the human being derives from the macrocosm, and that the phenomena of
the macrocosm — especially, therefore, the movements and positions
of the stars — are mysteriously connected with the microcosm, with
man. Hence the pupils of Zarathustra saw in the Zodiac the external
expression, the image, of Zervana Akarana, of the primal reality of Being
living and weaving through eternity. Even the very word
“Zodiac” is reminiscent of the word Zervana Akarana. The
pupils of Zarathustra saw twelve powers proceeding from the twelve
directions of the Zodiac, six directed towards the light side of the
Zodiac traversed by the sun by day; the other six towards the dark side
— turned, as they said, towards Ahriman. Thus the Persian conceived
of the macrocosmic forces coming from the twelve directions of the
universe and penetrating into, working into humanity, so that they are
immediately present in man. Consequently, what unfolds through the working
of the twelve forces must reveal itself also in its microcosmic form, in
human intelligence; that is to say, it must come to expression in the
microcosm, too, through the twelve Amshaspands
[see Note 27]
(Archangels),
and indeed as a final manifestation, so to say, of these twelve spiritual,
macrocosmic Beings who had already worked in former ages, preparing
that which merely reached a last stage of development during the epoch
of Persian civilisation.

It should not be beyond
the scope of modern physiology to know where the microcosmic counterparts
of the twelve Amshaspands are to be found. They are the twelve main
nerves proceeding from the head; these are nothing else than material
densifications of what arose in the human belong through the instreaming
of the twelve macrocosmic powers. The ancient Persians pictured the
twelve Archangel-Beings working from the twelve directions of the Zodiac,
working into the human head in twelve rays, in order gradually to produce
what is now our intelligence. Naturally they did not work into man for
the first time in the ancient Persian epoch, but finally they worked
in such a way that we can speak of twelve cosmic radiations, twelve
Archangel-radiations, which then densified in the human head into twelve
main cerebral nerves. And just as knowledge in a later age includes
what was already known in an earlier one, so could the Persians also
know that Spirits of a lower rank than the Archangels had been at work
previously, in the Indian epoch. The Persians called the Beings of the
rank below the Amshaspands, “Izads,” and of these they enumerated
28 to 31. The Izads, therefore, are Beings who give rise to a less lofty
activity; to soul-activity in man. They send in their rays, which correspond
to the 28, 30 to 31 spinal nerves. And so in Zarathustrianism you have
our modern physiology translated into terms of the spiritual, the macrocosmic,
in the twelve Amshaspands and in the 28 to 31 Izads of the next lower
Hierarchy.

A true fact of historical
evolution is that what was originally seen spiritually is now presented
to us through anatomical dissection; things that were formerly accessible
to clairvoyant vision appear in later epochs in materialistic form.
A wonderful bridge is disclosed here between Zarathustrianism, with
its spirituality, and modern physiology, with its materialism. Of course,
the destiny of the great majority of mankind makes it inevitable that
such an idea as that of the connection between the Persian Amshaspands
and Izads and our nerves is regarded as lunacy, especially by those
who study the materialistic physiology of to-day. But after all, we
have plenty of time, for the Persian epoch will be fully recapitulated
only in the Sixth epoch which follows our own. Then, for the first time,
the conditions prevailing will enable such things to be intelligible
to a large part of humanity. Therefore we have to content ourselves
with the fact that indications of them can be given to-day as part of
the spiritual-scientific outlook. And such indications must
be given if a spiritual-scientific conception of the world is to be
spoken of in the true sense, and attention called, not merely in general
phrases, to the fact that man is a microcosmic replica of the macrocosm.

In other regions, too,
it has been known that what comes to manifestation in the human being
flows in from outside. For example, in certain periods of Germanic mythology
mention is made of twelve streams flowing from Niflheim to Muspelheim.
The twelve streams are not meant in the physical-material sense, but
they are that which, seen by clairvoyance, flows as a kind of reflection
from the macrocosm into the human microcosm, the human being who moves
over the earth and whose evolution is to be brought about through macrocosmic
forces.

It must however be emphasised
that these streams are to be regarded to-day as astral streams, whereas
in the Atlantean epoch, which immediately followed that of Lemuria,
and in Lemuria itself, they could be seen as etheric streams. So a planet
which is related to the earth, but represents an earlier stage of development,
must reveal some similar phenomenon. And as from a distance things can
often be observed which in proximity escape our observation, because
what we see is then broken up into details, so in the case of a planet
resembling the earth, when it is sufficiently distant and passing through
earlier stages of development such as those undergone by our earth,
it might be possible, even to-day, to observe these twelve streams.

To be sure, they will
not look quite the Same as once they appeared when seen an the earth.
Distance is an essential factor, for if, to take an example, you are
standing in the midst of a swarm of gnats, you do not see the swarm
with its different shades of density; these are perceived only when
you see the swarm from some way off. What I have just said lies at the
root of the observations of so-called “canals” an Mars.
It is there a matter of certain streams of force which correspond to
an earlier stage of the earth
[see Note 28]
and are described in the old Germanic myths as streams flowing from
Niflheim to Muspelheim. Naturally this is rank heresy from the point of
view of modern academic physiology and astronomy, but these sciences will
have to submit to a great deal of revision in the course of the next
few thousand years.
[see Note 29]

All these things show
us what profound wisdom is to be divined in the simple saying: The human
microcosm is a kind of image of the macrocosm. Such sayings themselves
bear witness that the words touch directly upon the deepest treasures
of wisdom. The saying that man is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm
can be just a trivial phrase, but rightly understood it epitomises an
untold multitude of concrete truths. All this has been said in order
to indicate to you the configuration of soul in the man of ancient Persian
civilisation; especially in the leading personalities there was a living
feeling of man's connection with the macrocosm.

After the Beings whom
we have named in their sequence as Angels, Archangels and Spirits of
Personality had worked until the age of the Babylonian-Egyptian civilisation,
there followed that remarkable Greco-Latin civilisation which brought
the personality as such, the weaving of the ego in the ego, particularly
to expression. There, too, certain Beings made themselves manifest —
the Spirits of Form, who are one stage higher than the Spirits of Personality.
But the manifestation of these Spirits of Form was different from that
of the Spirits of Personality, the Archangels and the Angels. How do
the Spirits of Personality, the Archangels and the Angels manifest in
the Post-Atlantean epoch? They work into man's inner nature.
The Angels worked as inspirers of the ancient Indians; the Archangels
similarly in the ancient Persians, but here the influence of the human
element already asserted itself to a somewhat greater degree. The Spirits
of Personality stood as it were behind the souls of the Egyptians, urging
them to project the spiritual on to the physical plane. The Spirits
of Form manifest in a different way. They manifest from below upwards
as far more powerful Spirits who are not dependent upon using man merely
as an instrument; they manifest in the kingdoms of Nature around us,
in the configuration of the beings of the mineral, plant and animal
kingdoms. And if man would recognise the Spirits of Form in their manifestation,
he must direct his gaze outwards, he must observe Nature and investigate
what has been woven into her by the Spirits of Form. Consequently in
the Greek epoch, when the paramount manifestation is that of the Spirits
of Form, man does not receive any direct influence as an inspiration.
The influence of the Spirits of Form works far rather in such a way
that man is allured by the outer world of sense; his senses are directed
with joy and delight towards everything spread out around him, and he
tries to elaborate and perfect it. Thus the Spirits of Form attract
him from without. And one of the chief Spirits of Form is the Being
designated as Jahve or Jehovah. Although there are seven Spirits of
Form and they work in the different kingdoms of Nature, men of the present
age have a faculty of perception only for the one Spirit, Jehovah. —
If we reflect on all this, it will be intelligible to us that with the
approach of the fourth epoch, man is more or less forsaken by these
inner Guiding-Powers, by the Angels, Archangels and Spirits of Personality,
and that he turn his gaze entirely to the external world, to the physical
horizon where the Spirits of Form are in manifestation. They were of
course already present behind the physical world in earlier times, but
they had not as it were yielded themselves to human recognition. In
the period immediately following the Atlantean catastrophe, the Spirits
of Form had been at work; they had been at work in the kingdoms of Nature,
in the laws governing wind and weather, in the laws of the plants, animals
and minerals. They had also worked in times more ancient still. But
man did not direct his gaze to what then came to meet him externally,
for he was inwardly inspired by the other Spirits. His attention was
diverted from the outer world.

How is this to be explained?
In what sense are we to understand the fact that these other Hierarchies,
who are of a lower rank than the Spirits of Form, asserted their influence
so dominantly over against the already existing activity of the Spirits
of Form? This is connected with a definite period in the evolution of
the earth as a whole. To the clairvoyant vision which with the help
of the Akasha Chronicle looks back into the past, these things present
an appearance entirely different from the speculative pictures based
on the geological data of the present day. When we go back before the
activity of the Spirits of Personality in the Chaldean epoch, before
that of the Archangels in the ancient Persian and of the Angels in the
ancient Indian epoch, we come to the period when the Atlantean cataclysm
was at the height of its fury. We find our way gradually into the conditions
then prevailing. This is the time to which the legends of the Deluge
existing among the different peoples refer, but their picture of it
was very different from that drawn by the hypotheses of modern geology.
In still earlier Atlantean times, the picture was again quite different.
Man was a being capable of transformation. Before this catastrophe the
whole face of the earth was different from anything that can be imagined
to-day. You can well conceive that at that time Spiritual Hierarchies
worked into the earth still more strongly.

Between the old influences
in the Atlantean epoch and those in the Post-Atlantean, there was a
boundary-period filled by the Atlantean catastrophe — by those
events whereby the face of the earth was totally changed in regard to
the distribution of water and land. Such periods and changes consequent
upon them are connected with mighty processes in the constellation,
position and movement of the cosmic bodies connected with the sun. In
fact, such periods in the earth's evolution are determined and
directed from macrocosmic space. It would lead too far if I were to
attempt to describe to you how these successive periods are directed
and regulated by what is called in modern astronomy the precession of
the equinoxes. This is connected with the position of the earth's axis
in relation to the axis of the ecliptic, with mighty processes in the
constellation of neighbouring celestial bodies; and there are definite
times when, on account of the particular position of the earth's axis
in relation to these other bodies of the cosmic system, the distribution
of warmth and cold on our earth is radically changed. This position
of the earth's axis in relation to the neighbouring stars causes
the climatic conditions to change. In the course of something over 25,000
years, the axis of the earth describes a kind of conical or spherical
movement, so that conditions undergone by the earth at a certain time
are undergone again, in a different form and indeed at a higher stage,
after 25,000 to 26,000 years. But between these great periods of time
there are always shorter periods. The process does not go forward in
absolute, unvarying continuity, but in such a way that certain years
are crucial points, deeply incisive times in which momentous happenings
take place. And here, because it is of essential significance in the
whole historical development of earthly humanity, we may point particularly
to the fact that in the seventh millennium before Christ there was a
very specially important astronomical epoch — important because,
on account of the constellation brought about by the relative position
of the earth's axis to the neighbouring stars, the climatic conditions
on earth culminated in the Atlantean cataclysm. This happened six to
eight thousand years before our era, and the effects of it continued
for long ages. Here we can only emphasise what is correct, as opposed
to the fantastic periods of time that are mentioned, for these happenings
lie much less far behind us than is generally believed. During this
period the macrocosmic conditions worked into the physical in such a
way as to bring about the mighty physical upheavals of the Atlantean
cataclysm, which completely changed the face of the earth. This was
the greatest physical transformation of all, the most drastic action
of the macrocosm upon the physical earth. Hence the influence from the
macrocosm upon the spirit of man at that time was at its lowest; this
epoch therefore provided an opportunity for the less powerful Beings
of the Hierarchies to begin to exercise on man a potent influence, which
then ebbed gradually away.

Thus when the Spirits
of Form were working powerfully to revolutionise the physical, they
had less time to work also upon the spirit of man, with the result that
the physical vanished as it were from under man's feet. But an
the other hand it was precisely during the time of the Atlantean catastrophe
that men were transported most completely into spiritual realms and
only gradually found their way again into the physical world in the
Post-Atlantean epoch. Now when you picture that at this time —
six to eight thousand years before the Christian era — the least
influence was exercised upon the human spirit and the strongest influence
on the physical conditions of the earth, it will not be difficult for
you to conceive that there may be another point of time when the opposite
situation comes about: when those who are cognisant of such a matter
experience the reverse of these conditions — namely, the least
influence upon the physical and the greatest influence, precisely of
the Spirits of Form, upon the human spirit. Hypothetically you can conceive
that there may he a point in history where the reverse of the great
Atlantean catastrophe applies. Of course it will not be so easily noticeable,
for the Atlantean catastrophe, when parts of the very earth were blotted
out, is bound to be a very striking event for people of our Post-Atlantean
epoch, with their strong leanings to the physical. When the Spirits
of Form are exercising a powerful influence on the human personality
and have only a little influence upon what is taking place in the external
world, the impression will be less vivid. The point of time when this
condition — in the nature of things, less perceptible to men —
set in, was the year
A.D.
1250 This year 1250 is of momentous importance in history.
[see Note 30]
It fell in a period that can be characterised briefly as follows.

The spirits of men felt
as though impelled to express with the greatest possible precision how
the mind and heart can look upwards to the Divine Beings above the other
Hierarchies, how man seeks to come into relation with these Beings,
conceived primarily as a unity, first through Jehovah, then through
Christ, and how all human knowledge is to be applied to the unveiling
of the mystery of Christ Jesus. That was a point of time especially
adapted for conveying to mankind the mysteries which come to direct
expression in the connection of the Spiritual with the working of Nature.
Hence we see that this year 1250 was the starting-point of great and
detailed elaborations of what was formerly only believed, only divined:
it was the starting-point of Scholasticism, which is greatly
undervalued to-day.
[see Note 31]
It was also the starting-point of revelations which found expression in
spirits such as
Agrippa of Nettesheim,
and which took effect most deeply in
Rosicrucianism.
This shows that if we want to search for the deeper forces of
historical development, we must take stock of conditions
quite other than those outwardly in evidence. In point of fact, behind
the things of which I have just been speaking there are also hidden
the forces working, for example, in the waves and subsequent ebbing
of the Crusades. The whole of European history, especially the flow
of happenings between East and West is attributable solely to the fact
that forces are at work behind the events, as I have now elucidated.

We may therefore say:
There are two points of time, one of them marked by a great upheaval
an the outer physical plane and the other by a change in character of
all that had once resounded in the secrecy of the Mysteries. But we
must keep well in mind that in all such matters there are again other
laws which cut across the main laws. Hence we can understand that in
this period there lies the starting-point for great revelations; that
this period is entirely in keeping with the appearance of a man such
as Julian the Apostate, who had once been inspired in the Eleusinian
Mysteries. At that time he had opened his soul to the revelations coming
from the Spirits of Form. But the initial onset of a powerful influence
always works for a period of about four hundred years, then it begins
to ebb and the streams as it were to separate. Hence the eventual effect
of what had been perceived at that time as spiritual reality behind the
manifestations of Nature was that men forgot the Spiritual and paid
attention only to the manifestations of Nature.
That is the modern mentality.
Tycho Brahe
is one of the last of those who still grasped the
reality of the Spiritual behind the data constituting the sciences of
external Nature. Tycho Brahe was a truly wonderful personality, because
with. his supreme mastery of external astronomy he discovered thousands
of stars, and at the same time he had such deep inner knowledge of the
sway of the spiritual Powers that he could astonish all Europe by boldly
predicting the death of the Sultan Soliman. We see how out of the spiritual
nature-knowledge, which begins to appear in 1250 and is exemplified
in Spirits such as Agrippa of Nettesheim, there gradually emerges what
later on amounts merely to perception of the manifestations of external
Nature; while the inner, the Spiritual, remains in that mysterious stream
known to us as Rosicrucianism. Then the two streams flow on.

It is indeed remarkable
how this process shows itself in actual personalities. Once, near the
beginning of our German Movement, I drew your attention to how in a
personality of the 15th century there appears the continuance
of a spiritual
movement still connected with a certain knowledge of Nature, and how
the Spiritual is then cast aside and the further course is a purely
external one. We can follow this in the case of a single individuality:
Nicolaus Cusanus
(1401-1464). The mere reading of his works
— and one can do much more than read — shows clearly that
he combined a most penetrating spiritual vision with knowledge of outer
Nature, especially where this knowledge is clothed in mathematical forms.
And because he perceived how difficult this was, in an age moving more
and more towards external learning, he entitled his work, with epoch-making
humility,
Docta Ignorantia,
“Learned Ignorante.”
He did not of course mean to imply that he was himself an utter dunce,
but that what he had to say was above the level of what was going to
develop as mere external learning. To use a prefix much in vogue nowadays,
we may say: this “Learned Ignorance” is a “super”-learnedness.
Then, as you know, he was born again — it was a case of a very
quick reincarnation — as Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
[see Note 32]
The same being who had lived in Nicolaus Cusanus continued to work in
Nicolaus Copernicus. But you can see how far human mentality had moved
by that time towards the physical, for the depth of knowledge possessed
by Nicolaus Cusanus could work in Copernicus only in such a way as to
produce the plan of the outer, physical cosmos. The knowledge that had
lived in Nicolaus Cusanus was as it were filtered; the Spiritual was
ignored and re-cast in terms of external science. There we have a tangible
illustration of how that mighty impulse was to work within a short period
from the year 1250, which was its central point in time. What streamed
into our earth at this point of time worked on its own way. It worked
an in there two streams, one of which is materialistic and will become
ever more so, while the other strives for the Spiritual, manifesting
particularly in what we know as the Rosicrucian revelation, which flowed
in greatest intensity from this very starting-point, although there
had of course been previous preparation.

So you see that there
is a certain epoch, lasting for about six to eight thousand years, during
which earth-evolution passes through an important cycle in regard to
the historical facts with which man's development is interwoven. Such
cycles are again intersected by others, for periodic forces of the most
diverse kinds work into our earth-evolution. Only when we analyse, when
we investigate the particular forces and their configurations —
only then can we really fathom how things come to pass on the earth.
Through all such forces and laws mankind is brought forward and human
progress effected. You know, too, that in our century, but proceeding
from a different stream, there is an important point of time indicated
in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play,
The Portal of Initiation:
vision once again into the etheric world and the revelation of Christ
in that world.
[see Note 33]
But that belongs to a different stream — I am speaking now more of
forces that work into the broad basis of historical happenings.

If we want to understand
there happenings fully, we must also take into consideration that such
crucial points in evolution are always connected with certain positions
of the stars, and that in the year 1250 the earth's axis lay in a definite
position and was therefore related in a particular way to the so-called
minor axis of the ecliptic. When we take account of the fact that what
happens on the earth is brought about by great celestial conditions,
even external climates show us that further specialisation and differentiation
take place in the sphere of the earth itself. Because the forces work
in a certain way from the cosmos, the earth is girdled by the torrid
zone, then the temperate zone, then the arctic zone. This can be taken
as a kind of example of how what is brought about by spiritual happenings,
through the sun and other factors, takes effect on the physical plane.
But there is again differentiation an the earth itself; in the torrid
zone the climate of low-lying land is not the same as on heights, where
it can be extremely cold. Hence in the same latitude there is a quite
different distribution of climatic conditions to be observed in Africa,
say, as compared with America. There is also something in spiritual
evolution which allows of comparison with this kind of differentiation;
for it is really true that in epochs during which a definite character
due to the stellar constellations is widely predominant over the earth,
modifications, special conditions, come about in the activities of the
spiritual Beings and in the souls of men.

This is of great importance,
for from time to time provision has obviously to be made for the distant
future. Just imagine — naturally this is said hypothetically —
that the wise leadership of the world was obliged, thousands of years
ago, to say: There is a group of souls who must be prepared in order
to accomplish this or that task in their next incarnations. —
In such a case, connections have to be created so that perhaps a small
group of men who have undergone some quite definite happening, who are
incarnated together an a little corner of the earth, can pass through
an experience which, at that particular time, may seem unimportant.
But when we perceive how such men, having been crowded together in a
small area, are scattered abroad in their next incarnations, and make
effective for humanity as a whole what they received when they were
living in this narrow compass — then the matter takes an a very
different aspect. And so we can understand that in times when the general
character of mankind has a certain definite quality, something very
surprising may make its appearance in separate sections of civilisation,
something that is entirely distinct from the prevailing character. I
will give you an example of this, because it lies fairly near our own
time.

In Steinthal,
near Strassburg, Oberlin lived.
[see Note 34]
The deep-thinking German psychologist and researcher,
G. H. von Schubert, has repeatedly
referred to him This Oberlin was an unusual personality and he had a
strange effect upon people. He was clairvoyant — I can allude
to this only briefly — and after he had lost his wife comparatively
early, he was able to live with her individuality in a communion as
real as with a living person. Day by day he made notes of what was happening
in the world where his wife now dwelt; he also marked this an a map
of the heavens and showed it to the people who gathered around him,
so that actually a whole community shared in the life Oberlin was leading
with his deceased wife. Such a thing is strangely out of place at the
turn of the 18th and 19th centuries; but if you take what I have said
into consideration, you will grasp what it portends. Things such as
were revealed to Oberlin are among the most significant in this domain
in modern times. I may perhaps remind you that we now have a very fine
literary and historical work dealing with Oberlin and these affairs:
it is the novel by Fritz Lienhard.
[see Note 35]
You will find it extraordinarily stimulating reading, with regard not
only to the character of this priest but also to the cultural conditions
of those days. Such things, which can easily be underestimated and regarded
as chance, are able to show us how an occurrence of this kind strikes
into evolution, how it can take effect in the whole process of the evolution
of mankind. For the human beings who are thrown together in such circumstances,
who gather round a personality as the central figure, are destined to
undertake certain tasks in later incarnations.

So you see — and
this is what I wanted to bring before you today — how the great
macrocosmic penetration from the vast universe into the souls of men
is connected with what may take place in a minute arena. But these things
become especially interesting if we connect them with another law, with
such points of intersection in evolution as was the year 1250. At that
time there was the strongest possible penetration into the souls of
men — and that is not so readily noticed as the upheavals of continents.
During the Atlantean catastrophe the Spirits of Form worked so little
into the souls of men that the younger hierarchies held the field, as
it were, at that time. Thus the activities of the different ranks of
hierarchical Beings are distributed. And it is important to know that
again in these cyclic movements certain laws of ascent and decline prevail.
I indicated something of this when I said that in the year 1250 there
was an impetus and then an ebbing away which manifested in the current
of materialism. Such things are often to be perceived. And it is
interesting to notice how cycles of ascent and of decline alternate
in the history of mankind.